


Eyes Turned Skywards

by Sholio



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-29
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-08-09 06:18:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: I know what you are,David almost said, that day when Frank had him zip-tied to a chair.I know what you are... but he didn't say it, though he teetered on the edge of it more than once. He didn't, because he wanted Frank on his side, damn it, and most of all he didn't want to give Frank any more reasons to kill him than Frank already thought he had.





	Eyes Turned Skywards

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).



> _For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return._   
>  _  
> **\- Leonardo da Vinci**  
>  _   
> 

_I know what you are,_ David almost said, that day when Frank had him zip-tied to a chair.

 _I know what you are_ ... but he didn't say it, though he teetered on the edge of it more than once. He didn't, because he wanted Frank on his side, damn it, and most of all he didn't want to give Frank any more reasons to kill him than Frank already thought he had.

And he thought about saying something, off and on, in the days and weeks after.

_I know what you are. I read your file. ALL of your file. Yes, the redacted, classified parts too. You don't have to hide around me._

But by the time he relaxed around Frank enough to decide that Frank probably wasn't going to kill him just for admitting that he knew about a certain highly-classified military program (which admittedly didn't take very long; he had figured Frank from the very beginning as a guy who wasn't _that_ kind of killer), he'd already decided that Frank should be the one to tell him. It seemed unfair not to let Frank make that call, given how many of Frank's choices had already been taken away from him by other people.

 

*

 

When Curtis Hoyle saw Frank's bare back, all he said was, "Jesus fucking Christ."

"Yeah, I know," David said. He'd already seen it, not just in the process of changing Frank's bandages but also because, living in close quarters as they were, he'd seen Frank with his shirt off a few times. Frank didn't really _hide_ it, exactly. He wasn't that self-conscious about it.

Curtis shook his head and, with David's help, rolled Frank over, hiding the ropes of scar tissue twisting across Frank's back -- up, down, across, until you could hardly see his skin; it was a goddamn jigsaw puzzle. "Man's been through some shit."

"Yeah," David said, and he thought, _You don't know the half of it._

 

*

 

It took him a long time to figure out about Billy Russo. But then, there were a lot of things nobody figured out about Russo until it was too late.

He was so engrossed in the laptop on his knees that he was barely aware of Sarah moving, until she threw an arm around his waist and murmured sleepily, "Hey, stranger."

"Hey," he murmured back, taking a hand off the keyboard to stroke her hair. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, crosslegged in his boxers; the room was dark except for the glow of the laptop screen and a sliver of light coming in from the hotel suite's common room, where their security detail were playing cards in front of the door. The kids were asleep in the adjoining bedroom.

"C'mon. Come to bed."

"Can't," he said with a sigh, and closed the laptop, putting it aside. For a minute he just sat there in the near-dark, hand cupped on her cheek, and then he bent down to kiss her and gently untangled her arm from his waist.

"David?" She sat up, alarmed. In the half-light she was a study in shadows, the curve of a pale arm and the folds of the oversized T-shirt she liked to sleep in. "Where are you going?"

"I need to talk to Agent Madani." He reached for his pants. "Right now. It's urgent."

"David --" She swung her bare legs out of bed. "Are we in danger?"

That stopped him, made him turn with one leg in and one leg out of his jeans to put his arms around her. "No, honey. No. We're all right. We're going to be all right. No, it's just ..."

"It's Frank, then."

He didn't deny it, just let out a sigh against her hair. "He's the reason why I'm here with you right now. I have to help him."

"I know," was all she said.

 

*

 

He was genuinely surprised that the agents at the door were not only willing to call Madani at his insistence, but she showed up fifteen minutes later, dressed and alert and showing no signs of having been rousted out of bed. Presumably he wasn't the only one not getting much sleep lately.

"I need to talk privately. Not here."

She shook her head and escorted him into the hall. "I'm very busy, you know. You called at a bad time."

"I understand that, but you need to know this." He wiped his sweat-damp hand against his leg. Maybe he could still keep Frank out of this, if he shared the right information with her, and only that. "Billy Russo was part of an experimental military program."

"I know," Madani said, to his surprise.

"How much do you know?"

"Classified." She gave him a sharp look. "How do _you_ know?"

He mimed typing.

"Right. Why do I ask."

"Do you know what he can do, though, Agent Madani?"

There was a silence while she studied him with a level gaze. He knew that look well: the desire for more information, weighed against concern about compromising what she already knew. "Not a lot," she said at last.

"Well, I do. I just don't know if Frank does." That had been one of the variables he'd been juggling along with all the rest. It hadn't come up in Russo's interrogation of Frank, not even once. And it seemed like it would have, from one or the other of them, if they both knew, if they'd gone through it together .... but maybe they hadn't. There was a very real possibility that Frank didn't know what he was up against.

"Well?" Madani's voice was a whipcrack of impatience. "What are his capabilities?"

David hesitated, then slowly shook his head. He had one piece of information to leverage here; damned if he was going to squander it. "I want to talk to Frank."

"Damn it, Lieberman --"

"I need to talk to Frank. Do you know where he is?"

"I do." She raked her hand through her hair. "All right. All right. Come with me. But you stay behind me and do exactly what I tell you, got that?"

"Got it."

He looked back toward the door of the hotel suite before the elevator doors cut off his view of it. He should've said a proper goodbye to Sarah. Just in case. But he'd heard the goodbye in her voice in the bedroom. There might be hell to pay when he got back ... but she knew why he was leaving tonight, even if she didn't know all of it.

 

*

 

"Okay," Madani whispered with an ironclad grip on David's wrist, stopping him in an aborted lurch forward when he caught sight of Frank by the carousel. He'd glimpsed Russo for a minute and then lost sight of him. " _Now_ you need to tell me what he can do. Your pain-in-my-ass buddy's life might depend on it."

David drew a shaking breath. He actually wasn't entirely sure that Russo's capabilities were the same as Frank's, but he thought they had to be similar. "For one thing, he can sneak up on people. He could be behind us right now, hell, he could be standing in _front_ of us and we might not know."

"That's impossible."

"Yeah? Tell it to all the people he's killed doing his handlers' dirty work." He scanned the dark trees around them wildly. The music from the carousel jangled his nerves. Russo couldn't possibly know they were there, and he was entirely fixated on Frank in any case. That was probably the only reason why they were still alive.

_Would you have come out here if you'd known he was here?_

Yeah ... but he'd thought he was prepared; he'd thought all that time in the bunker with Frank had insulated him against the raw panic he was feeling now. It turned out that knowing what Frank could do was an entirely different thing than knowing there was a stone-cold killer somewhere near them right now who had the same set of capabilities.

"What else?" Madani whispered fiercely. Her grip on his arm was like iron. "There's more, isn't there?"

"Yeah --" he began, but just then he caught sight of Russo, on _top_ of the carousel. Crouching. Looking around, sighting through a night scope on a submachinegun. Wordlessly, he pointed.

"Shit," Madani whispered, pulling him down.

They both watched from the woods as Russo swung the scope around. If he pointed it at them, there was no way he wouldn't see them, but he was scanning closer to the carousel. Looking for Frank.

"What the hell's he doing now?" Madani murmured, as Russo carefully freed up one hand at a time from the weapon to slide his arms out of his jacket sleeves. He wasn't wearing anything under it, so now he was naked to the waist. He dropped the jacket beside him on top of the carousel.

David cursed inwardly. Goddammit it. Where was Frank? And did he _know?_ Well, that was the whole issue, wasn't it? And David couldn't see any point, not a single point to coming out here at all if he was just going to stand here and let things go down the way they were about to go down.

"What else can he do, Lieberman?" Madani whispered.

"I think you're about to see it --" David began, but then he broke off.

Some part of him hadn't expected it to actually happen. And, as it turned out, seeing the pictures in Frank and Russo's files -- still and grainy, reduced to movie-monster props -- hadn't even come close to preparing him for the reality.

It was _violent_. The wings exploded from Russo's shoulders, tearing his skin to bloody rags. They ripped out of him and arched above him: fifteen feet, twenty feet, ragged black wings streaked with blood. Dark swatches of blood splattered the top of the carousel around him, looking like motor oil in this light.

"Holy shit," Madani whispered. She seemed unsure where to point her gun. "Holy shit. Holy shit."

Framed against the city's glow, lit from below by the carousel, Russo looked like nothing so much as a demon -- a demon with a semiautomatic rifle, knees bent as he scanned around him for his target.

No one in their right mind expected to be attacked from above by a flying commando. That was, after all, the entire point. Even someone who had the same ability wouldn't be expecting it if they didn't know the other person could do it too.

"I'm really sorry about this," David whispered, and then he yelled as loud as he could, "Frank! He's above you! On the roof of the --"

Madani yanked them both to the side, rolling out of the way as Russo snapped around and a burst of gunfire cracked into the ground where they'd been a second ago, showering them both with dirt.

There had been some small, skeptical part of David that hadn't been sure if Russo actually could fly with those things, but he got his answer a minute later when Russo launched himself into the air. He wasn't a graceful flyer, more like a huge, ponderous crow. But the tremendous wingspan made him deceptively fast. In one long swoop, he glided several hundred yards. Madani snapped off several shots at him, missing every single time.

"Fucking hell!" she gasped. "What the _fuck--"_ and then Russo swooped over them and gunfire raked their hiding place.

It was a single instant of pure chaos. David found himself lying on his back, not even sure if he'd been hit, with Madani heavy and limp on top of him, looking up at Russo circling back against the sulfur-yellow glow of the city's night sky and thinking, _There's no way he's not going to shred us this time ..._

And then Frank Castle came out of nowhere, wings and all, and slammed into Russo, carrying him out of sight beyond the trees.

David stared for a moment longer, then struggled to sit up. There was blood all over both of them, and Madani was making little pained gasps.

"I'm sorry," David told her again. There was yelling and gunfire coming from the general direction of the carousel -- Russo and Frank going at it. Frank with wings ... that mental image was still splashed across the back of his retinas. He'd only seen him in silhouette, but that had been Frank, all right. Unmistakably Frank.

He was pretty sure that he wasn't hurt; all the blood on him was Madani's. David wrapped his jacket around her and covered her hands with his own, pressing them against her side.

"I gotta go help Frank," he told her, not sure what on earth he could do to help that a freaking supersoldier with _wings_ couldn't do, but he hadn't come this far to just sit here listening to Russo take Frank apart.

"Can you use a gun?" she whispered, and he nodded. "Take mine." As he felt around through the leaf-litter for it, she fumbled out her phone, leaving bloody streaks on the screen. "I'm calling in backup. This is too big for us."

David opened his mouth to protest, then shut it again. He couldn't trade her life for Frank's freedom; it wasn't fair. If Frank needed help getting away, well, he'd figure out a way.

Right now he had two people who needed his help, but Frank was the more critical one. If Russo won, he could come back and finish off David and Madani at his leisure.

So he picked his way through the trees towards the carousel. It was all quiet down there now; even the carousel music had stopped. David slowed, but then he glimpsed Frank through the trees, and realized it was all over anyway. So much for any heroics on the part of David Lieberman, computer hacker and action hero.

He wobbled up to the carousel on legs gone weak now that adrenaline was no longer carrying him forward. Russo was tied to one of the carousel horses, slumped and unconscious with his wings sprawling around him. Frank, sitting hunched on the edge of the carousel, didn't look much better; he was covered in blood and looked like he was barely staying upright. His wings were a rumpled mass around him, spilling over the edge onto the ground, dark with blood. If Russo's wings were black and crowlike, Frank's were more like those of a hawk, their barred markings dimly visible under the mess of gore left behind when they'd torn their way out of his back. 

"Check the kids," Frank said, his voice a weary rasp, which was the first point at which David noticed there were other people on the carousel. Kids. Hostages.

He couldn't really do much for them other than get them to lie down, but they looked okay (bloody, terrified, but not as bad off as Frank). David left them with promises that help was on the way and went to Frank, carefully stepping around the sprawled mass of Frank's wings.

"You hurt?" Frank asked. He looked even worse close up.

"No. I don't think so. Madani is, but she's still alive; she's back in the woods a ways." In the distance, sirens could be heard, growing nearer. "You need a head start, getting away? I can help."

"No," Frank rasped out. "I'm done running."

David nodded and sank down next to him. He fumbled for a place to put Madani's gun, realizing he didn't have a holster, and finally laid it on the floor of the carousel, pointed away from them.

Frank eyed him, and David wasn't sure why until Frank said, in that thready rasp, "You look less surprised than I'd'a thought."

"Yeah ... I've known all along," he admitted. "Since before I met you." He made the same little typing-in-air gesture that he'd done for Madani. His hands, he noticed, were streaked with her blood, the kids' blood ... someone's blood, anyway. Funny how it had stopped bothering him, for the most part. Just went to show, you could get used to anything.

Frank gave a short, startled bark of a laugh. "You're full of surprises, aren't you?"

"I try to keep people guessing." He looked at Frank's wings, yards of wet, sticky-looking feathers, crumpled like rucked-up canvas. "So where do those, uh ... go? When you're not using them."

"They fold up into my back," Frank said. "Don't ask me how it works." He caught a pained breath. "Right now, I can't ... too tired. Haven't got the control."

"You need to get them packed up before EMS gets here," David said, and Frank nodded. "Can I ... help?"

And that was how he ended up struggling with armfuls of slimy feathers, muscle and bone, while Frank tried to help as best he could (which wasn't a lot of help). Frank's wings were soaked in blood and a slippery substance that David -- who had been present at the births of both of his children -- couldn't help thinking reminded him of amniotic fluid. The fact that Frank's wings were warm and clearly alive, twitching occasionally in a tired-muscle-spasm kind of way, didn't help in the _slightest._ It was probably one of the worst things he'd ever had to do, and he was as filthy and gore-covered as Frank by the end.

But Frank was right; somehow, impossibly, his wings packed right back in there. His back still looked lumpy, but with so much blood all over him, it wasn't that different from how his back normally looked.

"What about him?" David asked, nodding to Russo as he tried (uselessly) to wipe his hands on the equally filthy thighs of his jeans. He was going to have to burn these clothes. "Are we gonna have to do that to him too?"

Frank's attempt at a smile was more like a pained, weary grimace. "Let him stay that way. They can think he's a freak if they want to."

"You're not a freak," David said flatly. "You saved my goddamn life."

He sank down on the ground next to the carousel, leaning against Frank's legs. And he stayed there until the sirens drew near and the space around the carousel filled up with emergency personnel, and browbeat them into letting him go with Frank in the ambulance. Frank seemed to have passed out by this point, but David kept a hand on Frank's bare arm, sticky with blood and cool to the touch. He wasn't sure if the presence of Frank's wings was going to come out in a medical examination or not, or exactly how much of a problem it was going to turn out to be, but he was fully prepared to rain unholy hell on anyone who even thought about whisking Frank off to some kind of secret government lab or whatever-the-fuck.

_You saved a lot of people tonight, you stubborn son of a bitch. It's time to let someone else keep an eye on you for a change._

**Author's Note:**

> For the "wings" square on my h/c bingo card.


End file.
